And the snowball will get bigger and bigger, until no one in the world is left uninvested, then people will make a shocking discovery......"I have this, everyone has this, why don't we use it as a currency?"

That's the plan.

Precisely. Bitcoin as a speculative asset is the ultimate currency trojan-horse. :-)

Gold is heavily manipulated. Primarily this is done by sovereign wealth funds and central banks.Saudi and USSR used to be the big movers.Of late it has been the US federal reserve dropping the price over the last year or so, ever since a handful of nations asked to repatriate their gold.So... since the price is set by the ETFs these days, the bullion banks can sell naked short the ETF as much as they like, backed by the Fed. They can take many billions in slippage losses in the fiat currency to drive it down. Once they have the physical at the new lower price, they can buy and ship. They asked the foreign nations (Deutshland primarily) to wait seven years for delivery (even though the gold would have fit on a few jumbo jets and logistically could have been arranged in a matter of weeks).

The gold price is primarily not set by the market in which we participate, and hasn't been for a long time.

Perversely as dollar risk rises, some folks will move to gold from bonds as interest rates climb so the gold bears will get some help there too.When it gets cheap enough, they will load up their truck with the stuff.

Gold is heavily manipulated. Primarily this is done by sovereign wealth funds and central banks.Saudi and USSR used to be the big movers.Of late it has been the US federal reserve dropping the price over the last year or so, ever since a handful of nations asked to repatriate their gold.So... since the price is set by the ETFs these days, the bullion banks can sell naked short the ETF as much as they like, backed by the Fed. They can take many billions in slippage losses in the fiat currency to drive it down. Once they have the physical at the new lower price, they can buy and ship. They asked the foreign nations (Deutshland primarily) to wait seven years for delivery (even though the gold would have fit on a few jumbo jets and logistically could have been arranged in a matter of weeks).

The gold price is primarily not set by the market in which we participate, and hasn't been for a long time.

Perversely as dollar risk rises, some folks will move to gold from bonds as interest rates climb so the gold bears will get some help there too.When it gets cheap enough, they will load up their truck with the stuff.

so explain to all of us why they let gold rise from 250 to 1921 from 2000 to 2011.

don't say they manipulated it up as that wouldn't explain why Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold reserves at the bottom of 2000.

so explain to all of us why they let gold rise from $250 to $1921 from 2000 to 2011.

don't say they manipulated it up as that wouldn't explain why Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold reserves at the bottom of 2000.

They thought that because of their successful manipulation, gold was cheap in 2000, so they would like to buy some from UK and other signatories. It was not needed to actively manipulate it up, it would rise quite naturally after so long suppression.

Gold's market cap had become minuscule compared to their derivative machinations so buying up more and more gold was not a sacrifice for them.

so explain to all of us why they let gold rise from $250 to $1921 from 2000 to 2011.

don't say they manipulated it up as that wouldn't explain why Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold reserves at the bottom of 2000.

They thought that because of their successful manipulation, gold was cheap in 2000, so they would like to buy some from UK and other signatories. It was not needed to actively manipulate it up, it would rise quite naturally after so long suppression.

Gold's market cap had become minuscule compared to their derivative machinations so buying up more and more gold was not a sacrifice for them.

In 2000 they thought that gold would be useful.

but they, in this context, implicates central banksters/bullion dealers and thus the Dark Side.

so explain to all of us why they let gold rise from $250 to $1921 from 2000 to 2011.

don't say they manipulated it up as that wouldn't explain why Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold reserves at the bottom of 2000.

They thought that because of their successful manipulation, gold was cheap in 2000, so they would like to buy some from UK and other signatories. It was not needed to actively manipulate it up, it would rise quite naturally after so long suppression.

Gold's market cap had become minuscule compared to their derivative machinations so buying up more and more gold was not a sacrifice for them.

In 2000 they thought that gold would be useful.

but they, in this context, implicates central banksters/bullion dealers and thus the Dark Side.

Even if you tin-foil-hatters imagine that there is a "they", a new world order, a conspiracy of some kind to do something, it would be foolish to consider that "they" are some kind of autocratic Dr. Evil top-down organization. It would instead be a loose confederation of competing individuals who have some agreements that benefit themselves to the detriment of the rest of the world. Think of a "survivor" alliance or one made while playing "risk" -- all know that in the end there can be only one. Should one member choose or be induced to sell gold at the bottom, the others would simply take advantage.

so explain to all of us why they let gold rise from $250 to $1921 from 2000 to 2011.

don't say they manipulated it up as that wouldn't explain why Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold reserves at the bottom of 2000.

They thought that because of their successful manipulation, gold was cheap in 2000, so they would like to buy some from UK and other signatories. It was not needed to actively manipulate it up, it would rise quite naturally after so long suppression.

Gold's market cap had become minuscule compared to their derivative machinations so buying up more and more gold was not a sacrifice for them.

In 2000 they thought that gold would be useful.

but they, in this context, implicates central banksters/bullion dealers and thus the Dark Side.

Even if you tin-foil-hatters imagine that there is a "they", a new world order, a conspiracy of some kind to do something, it would be foolish to consider that "they" are some kind of autocratic Dr. Evil top-down organization. It would instead be a loose confederation of competing individuals who have some agreements that benefit themselves to the detriment of the rest of the world. Think of a "survivor" alliance or one made while playing "risk" -- all know that in the end there can be only one. Should one member choose or be induced to sell gold at the bottom, the others would simply take advantage.

would it not be more effective/competitive against everyone else if they actually did collude?

The gold was sold by the banksters from the "public" pocket of Her Majesty's Treasury to the "private" pocket of Rothschild, when the time was opportune:

- The populace could be convinced that it was beneficial to get rid of gold- Price was low for the buyer- Buyer had ample means to pay due to expansion of fiat and financial instruments.

the whole of uk went facepalming when that became evident. though somehow the media convinced the public that fiat is as good as gold. pathetic. in the long run it seems rothchilds were smarter than rockefellers while believing in gold. rockefeller's clan is at the final stage of world dominance with their printing shop. turn for house of rothchild rise to power within china. most of their gold is now in hong kong together with their new base of operations. i wonder when they'll see potential of cryptos..

"between 'lives' we all have a great laugh about the parts we have performed in the 'play', and look forward to and have great fun preparing the next chapters to act out."

At the time the goldbugs forum was kitco (before the site was changed), and it was similar in some ways to this place except that it was essentially one long board rather than a subdivided forum. It was also the exact opposite in terms of sentiment: mostly unending despair rather than the euphoria found here.

I went there (and PMs in general) some time after Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" speech – which didn’t stop the mad stock market and wasn’t followed by real dampening action. Mainly bugs just couldn't believe that the money printing and stock market froth could possibly continue (what's changed?), and so they bought the gold that everyone else was selling and laughing at. The mood at the time was that PMs were dead, apart from their small industrial use, and that you’d be mad to hold such an out of date asset in the modern world of omnipotent Central Banks. Not only didn’t you get interest, you actually had to pay people to store it, and heaven help you if you wanted to move it around. We bugs ate crow for years.

All the clever people were dis-investing. You couldn’t give silver away, and even on kitco it was commonly called “sludge”. I wasn’t especially clever, but I figured a storm was coming and I liked that an ounce of gold bought a loaf of bread a day for year in Roman times, and in 98 it still did.

The feeling at the time was because a rising gold price had always been seen as a signal that something was amiss in fiat land, the Central Banks would manipulate the hell out of it to keep it low and the investors calm. The feeling was also that this was largely accomplished by the gold carry trade: lend to the bullion banks at around a quarter percent (thus also showing that you were clever enough to raise a return on the barbarous relic) who would then sell to buy US treasuries at 4 percent. BBs got free money and the CBs got a lower gold price and apparent approval from the markets. As for the unwinding, well, we’ll see how Germany does in the next few years

Gordon Brown just followed conventional wisdom – why hold a non-performing, declining asset when you could swap for USD and get your interest. The Chinese, Russians, Germans and a few kitco tinfoil hatters bought.